The line that went missing
Take a Devanagari chart, rub out the bar along the top of every letter, and you are most of the way to reading Gujarati. The two scripts match nearly letter for letter, and the exceptions fit on one hand: a retroflex ળ Hindi never uses, a dotted row Gujarati never adopted, two letters for the open vowels of loans, and an r that will not take u the ordinary way. Here is the map, what is and is not known about how the line came off, and a plan for reading ભાષાઓ by the end of a weekend.
Step off a train in Ahmedabad or Surat and the signboards give a Hindi reader a first impression: Devanagari with the tops cut off. The impression is correct, and nearly the whole story. Gujarati is Nagari without the shirorekha, the headline that runs along a Devanagari word and ties its letters together. Take the line away, let each letter stand alone, round a few corners, and what remains is the script of Gujarat, with grid, vowel signs and clusters where a Hindi reader expects them.
Start with the grid. ક ખ ગ ઘ are क ख ग घ, ka kha ga gha, and the rows run on in the same order, through ટ ઠ ડ ઢ ણ to પ ફ બ ભ મ. Every consonant carries an automatic a, and the same marks change it: ા after the letter, િ before it, ુ ૂ beneath, ે ૈ above, and ો ૌ built from ા and those hooks as ो and ौ are. આ, ઓ and ઔ are અ with a sign attached, as आ, ओ and औ are अ with one. Take the app’s name. ભાષાઓ is ભ with ા, ષ with ા, and the vowel letter ઓ, which is भाषाओ letter for letter, sounded out on sight as bhaashaao. What the script cannot tell you is that the final ઓ is a plural ending, so ભાષાઓ means “languages,” where Hindi would say भाषाएँ. Transparent letters, a sister’s grammar.
Clusters follow Devanagari’s habits. The first consonant loses its stem and becomes a half form leaning on the next, so the સ્ત of રસ્તો rasto is built like the स्त of रास्ता raasta. An r that opens a cluster shrinks to the reph, a hook above the following letter, so ધર્મ matches धर्म; an r that closes one becomes a short stroke tucked underneath, and મિત્ર answers मित्र part for part. ક્ષ is क्ष and જ્ઞ is ज्ञ, with one surprise for the ear: Gujarati says જ્ઞ with a real g, so જ્ઞાન is gnaan where ज्ञान is gyaan.
A few letters must be learned as new shapes: અ first, since આ, ઓ and ઔ are built on it, then ઇ, ઈ, ઝ, ણ, લ and હ. Then there is one letter Hindi does not have. ળ is the retroflex l, the tongue curled back as for ટ and ડ. Devanagari has the letter, ळ, and Marathi uses it; Hindi has neither the sound nor the habit. So in a good many words where Hindi has plain l, Gujarati has ળ: काला and કાળો kaalo, फल and ફળ phal.
The dotted letters run the other way. Hindi added a nuqta beneath the letter to spell sounds Sanskrit lacked: ज़ फ़ ख़ ग़ क़ for the Perso-Arabic z, f, kh, gh and q, and ड़ ढ़ for its own flapped d and dh. Gujarati adopted none of them as ordinary spelling. The Perso-Arabic sounds fold into letters it already had, so the same loans arrive with one row fewer: बाज़ार is બજાર bajaar, ख़ुशी is ખુશી khushi, and A bazaar without a z follows the whole row through the door. The flap is left to the reader: घोड़ा is ઘોડો ghodo, a plain ડ doing double duty. Gujarati has a nuqta of its own on paper, but everyday print does without it; an English z, by contrast, is usually spelled ઝ, so zero is ઝીરો jhiro.
Gujarati has open e and o of its own, said in કેમ kem and કોણ kon but written with the plain letters. For the open vowels of English bank and college it added letters, ઍ and ઑ, with matching signs: બૅન્ક and કૉલેજ. Devanagari has the pair too, ऍ and ऑ, but Hindi reaches for the second far more readily than the first, कॉलेज against बैंक; Gujarati uses both as a matter of course. In both scripts ર refuses to take u and oo the ordinary way, the sign attaching to its side rather than beneath, giving रु रू and રુ રૂ. Learn them as whole shapes; ગુરુ guru and રૂપ roop are read, not assembled.
How the line came off needs care. The usual account: Nagari with its headline served manuscripts and learning, and Gujarati literature was long copied in it, while scribes and merchants kept accounts and wrote letters in a faster hand of the same script that skipped the headline, a hand named after its users, bankers and merchants. When Gujarati began to be printed, from the end of the eighteenth century and largely in Bombay, the typefounders cut this everyday hand, and nineteenth-century newspapers and schoolbooks fixed its letterforms. So far, broadly agreed. When the headline was first dropped, whether in one place or several, and how much of the modern shape is scribal habit as against the typefounder’s tidying: several accounts have been proposed and none is agreed, and this essay says so rather than picking the tidiest.
The plan writes itself. Read the Devanagari chart you know with the headline mentally erased; most letters identify themselves. Spend an hour on the shapes that do not, અ ઇ ઈ ઝ ણ લ હ, and add ળ as a new letter with a new sound. Treat the exceptions as rules: no dotted row, so a જ in a loan you know may be Hindi’s z; two loan vowels with letters of their own; ર with its odd u and oo. Then read words you already own: હાથ haath, ઘર ghar, પાણી paani and દૂધ doodh are हाथ, घर, पानी and दूध worn a little differently; decoding them is recognition, not translation. A weekend is a fair estimate for reading. What the letters will not hand you is the sound underneath: મિત્ર is said mitra where Hindi says mitr, and the હ of બહેન bahen (sister) has thinned to a breath for many speakers. The line went missing and the skeleton stayed. The script is the easy part; the sister language behind it is the part worth the time.
